


The Center is Hollow

by OrdinaryBird



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil is Inhuman, Gen, Kevin is Inhuman, Strexcorp
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 15:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3615357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrdinaryBird/pseuds/OrdinaryBird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kevin attempts a heart-to-heart with Cecil about StrexCorp and the Smiling God. What's that? Cecil is bound and gagged through most of it? Pssht, details.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Center is Hollow

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes places somewhere outside of continuity and is not in line with the current plot. It's also an attempt to use five of seven Keven Appreciation Week prompts in one story.

The room was dark enough, although the terrible light of this stupid town was still visible through the yellow tarp covering the windows. The bag was off his head now, although a carefully-rolled bandanna was shoved in his mouth and tied around the back of his head. At least he didn’t have to worry about the blood that was on it, as recent experience illustrated in no uncertain terms that it was, in fact, his own. 

He’d been tied to this chair for some time now--not too tightly, but his backside had been numb for at least as long as he’d been awake--and was starting to get a little hungry.

A door opened, washing the room with light. _Oh_ , he thought, horror tightening his throat, _so that’s what I was stepping in_. He looked up. Someone ( _oh no, no no no not you_ ) squished across the wide variety of red and, occasionally, pinkish organic matter.

The newcomer sat in a chair across from him and smiled in the shadows with too many wicked, sinister teeth, and Cecil’s cheeks hurt just looking at the impossible width of the grin.

“Hi, Cecil,” Kevin said. The surface was chipper, but underneath was a hint of gloating that Cecil didn’t think was entirely appropriate to the situation. He steadied his face into a look of skeptical boredom. But his effort to sit up a little straighter provoked a wince he wasn’t quite expecting and therefore couldn’t suppress. 

“Oh, I’m sorry about your ribs. See, we had a bit of a betting pool in the office, just casual you know, on whether or not you were one of the 53 percent? Well, when you frightened your poor Strex-Pet, I won, and now Lauren has to bring me coffee for a week! Isn’t that funny? So that’s how we knew where to hit you and roughly how hard to get you in the van with minimum damage.” 

The smile widened. How did he have enough face for such a smile?

“I may have had a little advantage,” Kevin went on, tapping the side of his nose conspiratorially, “but it was all in good fun.” He reached into the inside pocket of his streaked blazer and pulled out a small, red-stained paper pack. “Mind if I smoke?” He pulled out a pinkened cigarette and lit it without waiting for an nod, sighing out a curling cloud that caught the light and drifted in Cecil’s direction. “Ah. My last vice. We estimate it’ll take, oh, at least 7.5 years off my life, so you’ll understand why I have to work so much overtime. Got to keep my numbers up!” 

Cecil coughed a bit into the bandanna, wincing again.

“Sorry.” Kevin did not sound sorry. 

They stared at each other for a moment. Cecil had let his affected calm slip and was openly glaring, and Kevin sat and smoked, tapping ash onto the floor, carefully avoiding his bloodstained slacks.

“I’ll bet you just have _tons_ of questions--” he ignored the rise in Cecil’s eyebrows, hinting at his still-gagged mouth-- “but I’ve got some specifics we need to cover, so just let me get through that and there may be time afterward if there’s anything you still need to know.”

He rose and walked back toward the door. He slammed it shut with a heavy metallic clunk and touched something in the semi-darkness. Bare fluorescent tubes flickered on overhead. But Cecil was watching the corner he’d just left as Kevin squished across the bloody floor.

The thing he’d touched was a still-beating heart. 

“Like it?” Kevin chirped, and that gloating tone was still present. “Not everyone is cut out for a fully productive life, you see. They get lazy. ‘ _oooh, I’m so tiiiiired_ ,’ ‘ _This is so haaaard_ ,’ ‘ _I broke my spiiiiine_.’ But you know what they say: waste not, want not!” He took the last drag of his cigarette and stubbed it out carefully on the concrete floor. It sizzled briefly in the dampness.

“Did you know that a heart can generate 1.33 watts per minute? And that’s just a human heart!” He uncrossed his legs, then crossed them again in the other direction. “Imagine what yours could do.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway. Time to get to work! So, you did your level best to kill me, and I have to applaud your creativity, and that precious moment of solidarity with Steve Carlsberg. Genuine kindness! From you! Brought together by your poor, broken little niece. What’s her name? Janet? Oh, no, that’s right-- _Janice_. She’s a Girl Scout, isn’t she? You know, I never did thank her for those delicious cookies.”

He leaned forward slightly, seeming to relish the unconscious twist of Cecil’s face, the snarl absorbed by the bandanna. Cecil knew he was being baited but didn’t care to smother his reaction.

“Oh. Did you think--? I’m sorry! Don’t you worry, she’s fine. Or at least as fine as she can be, given her state.” He reached back into his pocket for the cigarettes again. “Oh, and Carlos is too. Juuust fine. We’ll keep an eye on him for you, since Cecil Palmer can’t come to the phone right now.” He lit another, mostly a dark, rusty color and twisted, like it had been saturated and then dried. “Or possibly ever! We’ll find out together, won’t we? And Carlos will find out...a little bit after we do.”

_Don’t react don’t respond don’t give in_ \-- but Cecil stopped his foot as hard as he could, given the binding, and the squish was both nauseating and anticlimactic. 

“Gosh, you two are just so cute. I wish you’d come peacefully--we at StrexCorp pride ourselves on our inclusive work atmosphere. Everyone can play a part! Everyone _must_ play a part.”

“So let me tell you a little about me. So you can understand. My part here, and yours.” He settled in. “Well, I was a radio intern once--just like you may have been!--when I was in high school. Oh, I was such a little rebel. I really only agreed to the position because I had the biggest crush on one of the hosts, and the idea of bringing his coffee to him in the morning made my little heart flutter. But I wanted to be a real journalist, not just a community radio host. I was going to change everything. I was gonna give it to Desert Bluffs like it really was! It was just a _hoot_ ,” he cackled. 

“So one day, StrexCorp bought the radio station. I didn’t quite understand the gravity of this at the time, I still thought I could be a hero. I hadn’t seen--hadn’t seen the light. Picture yourself at 15, Cecil. Did you think you knew everything? Did you have your future mapped out, like nothing new would ever come along and snatch away everything you loved and replace it with bright, wonderful, terrible light?

“Let me tell you, Cecil, we were much gentler with you than what happened in Desert Bluffs. The number of people lost in the struggle was absolutely a waste. These little pockets of resistance kept cropping up, and I thought the skills from my Subversive Radio Host badge could keep me at the center of it, delivering messages in secret, helping create a unified front--!

“The whole thing took about two days. Everyone else had given in, but not me. I wanted to fight on. I hid. I waited. Then, three days after it was over, they found me.”

He stood suddenly, staring at a spot near the ceiling to the left of Cecil’s head. “Oh, they found me, and they took me to the studio. I was in awe of the new technology, although I was still so _afraid_ of the changes. But they brought me to the light. To a Smiling God, bright and awesome, who burned away my impurities, fixed my imperfections.” He looked back down again. “You know the ones. That ache in your knee on rainy days. The flickering in the corner of your eye, that sudden feeling of unreality, the struggle to keep your mask on, wondering who else you will lose if it slips again. The fear. The pain. Not only being different, but _knowing_ you’re different.

“We can fix it all, Cecil. Isn’t that exciting? Oh, you think you don’t need fixing, but if you only knew what it was like, letting the cold light rip through you, screaming until your voice breaks, staring until _you_ break, and left clean and pure and limp like a quilt bleached by the desert sun. Don’t you want that?”

Kevin’s face was a mask of horrific ecstasy. His eyes, hollow and empty and achingly wide, met Cecil’s.

Cecil stared at this reflection of himself, lips peeled back, like an image from a bent and filthy mirror, twisted and wrong. He maintained eye contact and pushed himself up again, not noticing the pain in his ribs or the twinge in his shoulder from being tied in one position for so long. Slowly and gravely, he shook his head.

Kevin slumped a bit in an exaggeration of regret. “That’s too bad. It really is. You see, Cecil, I know how you feel, and I sympathize with you. That’s why your heart isn’t resting comfortably next to my bedside lamp! You can’t help but fight. But you just don’t know the truth!”

Cecil snorted.

“No, really! Let me tell you another story about me.” He sat and crossed his legs again. “When your friend Steve threw me into the void, I probably should have actually died. It’s not an easy place to survive, let me tell you! But I was alive, and if there had been any mercy in the universe I wouldn’t have been. And I know why. The Smiling God--”

Kevin’s voice broke slightly. He cleared his throat and tried to move on. His lips struggled gallantly to maintain the rictus, but his dark eyes were shiny with what may have been tears. He tried again.

“The Smiling God reached into me again with the searing light and I knew--I wasn’t done yet. I have so much more work to do! I haven’t earned death yet because inside--” he blinked twice, glanced up, then stared at Cecil with alarming intensity, his brows together, frowning. A possible tear slipped down his face, leaving a little clean streak in the red smear on his cheek. “Inside I am still a frightened boy with braces and shadows. I am still fighting perfection. I am still so scared and alone, I am still crouching in the dimness, keeping up my mask. Some of me is still dark, still hidden. And that part understands you very well, Cecil Palmer.”

He blinked again, twice, shook his head and brightened again. “And that’s why I don’t get to die yet! My life is still happening in the cold, pure light of the Smiling God, I haven’t earned the shade of death. Isn’t it wonderful? You, out in Night Vale, you have to earn your deaths just like we do--but we have direction! We have purpose! We have a never-tiring, always-needing God at our backs, making sure we don’t rest until we deserve to!

“And in return--I am not alone. People like me! We are kind to each other. There is no fear. There is...minimal pain. Everything is smooth and easy. I don’t have a partner anymore to alter my mood, to bicker with or make love to, so no complications! You don’t think so now, but you would really like a life free of such complications. Imagine smooth sailing with Carlos in peaceful domesticity, working and sleeping and eating side-by-side without a need to talk to each other or even really look at each other!”

His smiled had perked up again. “In any case. We have things for you to do. You are _so_ important to us. Isn’t it wonderful, to be important to so many people? We need you so much. We need your voice. We need your heart. We need that winning smile of yours, and I bet we can make it a little brighter!

“Night Vale needs you, Cecil. They need you to lead them into the wide open arms of a Smiling God. They will follow that sweet tongue of yours.” He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. There was still a little glimmer of a tear in one of his horrifying eyes, and it crept down his face and dripped off his stretched lip. “Don’t make my mistake, Cecil. I’m telling you this as a friend. As...someone very much like you. If you would just walk, we won’t have to drag you.”


End file.
